


Untitled (A Teenchester Summer Fic)

by leestone



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-07 13:56:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leestone/pseuds/leestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scheming, swimming, and school supplies in the last days of Summer, 1998: The life Sam plans to save is Sam's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled (A Teenchester Summer Fic)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ordinarily (tofty)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofty/gifts).



1.  
Sam finishes reading _The Outsiders_ on August 19th, the day summer dies in Arden, Oklahoma. He wakes in the thin green light of dawn. It is his favorite time of day, this hour of stolen privacy. His hand fishes beneath the frayed nylon of his sleeping bag for book and flashlight.  
  
By the time he turns the last curl-cornered page of the novel, birds are crying in the trees outside and Sam can make out his dad's heavy step in the hall, Dean's careless banging of cabinets. In a few minutes one of them will remember to shout him awake.  
  
He opens the book again, thumbs to the copyright page to check the publication date: 1967. A paragraph opposite gives a short biographical sketch of S.E. Hinton. Sam makes a small noise of surprise as he skims this, then tosses the book aside and falls back onto his pillow. If he'd finished the unit along with Mr. Wyatt's freshman English class last fall, Sam supposes he would have learned that Hinton was both female and his own age when she began writing _The Outsiders._ But they'd moved on mid-semester, as always, leaving Fairfax to exorcise a poltergeist in upstate Arkansas. That had been...how many jobs ago? Enough that Sam had been startled to find the paperback stashed in a pocket of his duffel. He'd taken a deep, compulsive whiff of its crumbling pages (a tic Dean had decreed the weirdest of all Sam's weird kinks) and decided to see whether the book ended differently than the movie.  
  
He stares at the ceiling and tries to imagine graduating high school with a published novel under his belt, but it's no use--most days he knows he'll be lucky to collect enough credits for a diploma in the first place. All he has to show for his existence, to date, are a patched-together transcript of decent grades and a really awesome collection of claw marks and stab scars.  
  
" _Sammy!_ " Dad gives his door three sharp bangs. " _Breakfast and laps in ten!_ "  
  
"Fuck my life," Sam says, to no one.  
  
"...What was that?"  
  
"I said, _All right!_ Jeez." He rolls off his spread, stretches till he hears his joints pop. When he manages to wrench the paint-stuck window open, Sam gets his second surprise of the morning: A gust of cool, damp air billows his shirt back at the waist. He sticks his head out. The day is bright, heating fast over the back lawn of their house, but the tang of dried leaves and fog in that breeze was unmistakable. Autumn is here. Sam pulls back in and presses his cheek to the grimy windowpane. Some nameless relief weakens his knees. Autumn, _finally_.  
  
*****  
  
Dean, shirtless, is chopping firewood in the front yard. They don't need wood. Dean just likes the target practice.  
  
Sam shuffles through the overgrown grass to watch. "What do you hunt with an _axe_?" he asks, plopping down on an elm stump nearby.  
  
"Plenty, depending on what the head's made of." Dean hits his mark with a hollow thunk. "Silver. Iron. You can dip the blade in holy water."  
  
"Gross," Sam says, impressed with the gore potential despite himself. Dean swings again, stumbling a bit when the axe lands.  
  
Sam points. "Your stance is off. You need to brace your left leg a little better. Like this." He struts his leg back to demonstrate.  
  
Dean stares at him. "How would you know?"  
  
Sam shrugs. He might not know the first thing about splitting logs, but he could write a term paper on Dean's center of gravity. How could he not, after countless hours of sparring, of throwing and grappling each other to the ground? Too, he's had a lifetime of simple observation. He's seen how Dean plants himself to throw a roundhouse, how he counterbalances the recoil from a sawed-off.  
  
Sam grasps the mechanics of his brother's body, but the subject is in flux and Sam's only basis for comparison is himself. It's these changes that confuse him--endlessly factoring in growth spurts and making allowances for injuries, Dean's broadening shoulders, his own lower voice and shins stretching out (it seems some nights) by the yard. So their mutual familiarity is slippery and unreliable at best. At worst, it's begun to feel stained at the edges with some vague discomfort that clenches Sam's stomach at 4 a.m. He doesn't _want_ to know this much about his brother's body. Doesn't want to be more than an impartial observer. He doesn't want to enjoy watching Dean chop wood or run laps or shovel grave dirt.  
  
Because it's not like Sam can just...turn it off, being conscious of Dean on that level. It's not like his awareness goes away when he sees Dean with a girl, for instance. And being connected in that intimate way--allowing his brother's body, its rhythms and magnetism, to affect his _own_ body--is so far from the version of Sam Winchester that Mr. Wyatt recognized, it's sickening. It's a leap of the imagination Sam can't justify. He may have spent fifteen years tethered to Dean like tides to the moon, but Sam is getting better at undoing tricky knots.  
  
"I don't tell you how to build a science fair volcano," Dean says. "Don't tell me how to axe-murder." He flicks sweat from his chest at Sam's face.  
  
Sam jerks back, sputtering. "Ugh! Dammit, Dean." He scrubs at his face with his t-shirt, which is soaked through with his own sweat from their three-mile run and therefore only marginally less disgusting. "And you did too tell me how to build a science fair volcano, jerk."  
  
Dean pauses mid-swing. "I did?"  
  
"You _would_ forget." Sam rolls his eyes.  
  
"...Did you get a ribbon?"  
  
"I got suspended," Sam says. "From the third grade. For using lighter fluid on papier-mache."  
  
"Oh yeah," Dean says, sly. He smiles sideways at Sam and hefts the axe again. "That part I remember."  
  
When the axe slams down, Sam notices, Dean's leg is strutted back perfectly.  
  
He stands and clears his throat. "So I need some stuff for school."  
  
"What?" Dean says. Another log explodes in two. "Jesus Christ, Sam! It's summer!"  
  
"August is halfway over! School starts in a couple weeks no matter where we go, Dean. I need supplies." He wills himself not to sound anxious or, worse, whiny.  
  
"Okay, okay. Quit whining." Dean hefts and swings, hefts and swings. "I'll pick up your stuff next time I make a grocery run."  
  
"No--" Sam crosses his arms, clears his throat again. "I was thinking you could drive me into town so I could get my own stuff, this year."  
  
This throws Dean's rhythm. " _What_?" he says again.  
  
Sam shrugs.  
  
"Fuck's the difference?" Dean asks, honestly perplexed. He leans on the axe like a cane, facing Sam for the first time. "It's just notebooks and pencils and, and whatever. I buy you your school crap every year. We really gotta make a special trip for this?"  
  
"Well--I'll need this graph paper. And a field notebook for bio. I just...need to do it myself." Sam has been avoiding Dean's eyes but he meets them now, lowers his voice to the tone guaranteed to get results. "Okay, Dean? Please?"  
  
Dean sighs and swipes an armful of sweat from his brow. "Fine, whatever. We can go in later today, after Dad and I restock the trunk. But, Sammy, listen." He pokes a finger at Sam's chest. "You're not going back in for a couple weeks, still, and it probably won't be here in Arden. We've got work to do. This shapeshifter ain't gonna kill itself, you know?" He holds Sam's gaze, speaks in the mature, commanding _in loco parentis_ timbre that Sam has come to loathe with his entire being. "We need you focused on what matters. Eyes on the prize. Got it?"  
  
"Yeah, got it." Sam gives him half a smile and turns to go. Dean snags him by the crook of his arm.  
  
"Uh, _thank you_?" Dean rolls his eyes melodramatically. "What would I do without you, Dean, best big brother ever? Chauffeur and all-around stellar role model?"  
  
He considers Dean. And then Sam smiles, a real smile, because it's what Dean needs. And Sam is finding it so easy, lately, to give Dean what he needs--it's so very little, after all. As much as it chafes Sam to obey their father's orders, indulging Dean costs Sam nearly nothing. It's like--  
  
 _Like throwing a dog a bone._  
  
The cruelty of the thought makes Sam cringe. Dean doesn't seem to notice; Sam's smile has had its usual bolstering effect. Dean pulls his little brother into a fierce, brief, headlock, then shoves him backwards as he hooks his foot behind Sam's knee. The move sends Sam tumbling onto his ass in the tall weeds. Dean strides off, humming _The Immigrant Song_. He heads toward the tumbledown storage shed where, Sam knows, he will spend the next fifteen minutes painstakingly cleaning and re-sharpening the axe to their father's specifications. Sam watches him go, stomach roiling with all things messy and unscientific.  
  
  
2.  
Sam, too, has learned to savor the bones his family tosses his way from time to time. So he is happy to ride shotgun into downtown Arden four hours later, the Impala streaking a comet-trail of road dust into the back country air. Sam can see nothing but low gold Oklahoma plain in every direction. The windows are cranked down and John Fogerty is wailing about barefoot girls dancing in the moonlight.  
  
 _Happy_. Sam mouths the word, instructing himself. This is happiness.  
  
"What are you picking up in town?" He has to shout over the rush of wind.  
  
"Salt, some whetstones and ammo. Tripwire. Couple boxes of Cap'n Crunch." Dean sticks his arm out in the breeze. "The usual."  
  
"Don't forget blue Gatorade. And the peanut butter! Crunchy." Crunchy peanut butter is all Sam wants to eat lately. He's fully capable of mainlining it straight from the jar, spoon optional.  
  
"Yes, Your Majesty. You know, not for nothing, Sam, but. Did you ever notice that paper and pencils come in reams and boxes of like, a thousand? Why do you think that is?"  
  
"I don't know, Dean. Please tell me why."  
  
"So you can just ask the dude next to you for one. You do _get_ that, right? That paper and pens and shit like that are just meant to be bummed off other kids? You can literally live your entire life and _never have to buy your own pencils_. They're free. Like water." Dean pauses to let this sink in. "True facts."  
  
Sam looks at him. "Wow, Dean. That was deep."  
  
"Yes," Dean says. "Yes. You heard it here first."  
  
"Thanks," Sam says, tranquil.  
  
"No problem." They listen to the Creedence for a minute, smiling, before Dean says, "Man, when you started talking about school this morning, I almost flipped out. Totally forgot I don't have to go back." He says again, slowly, "I don't ever have to go back to high school. I'm done. Kinda freaky, huh?"  
  
Careful to sound neutral, Sam asks, "Do you get, like, a certificate with the G.E.D.? Or some kind of diploma?"  
  
"Nah," Dean says. "Well, I mean, probably. But we'll be long gone by the time they mail it. Who cares, I got the thing, that's the point, right? Now I can stop wasting everyone's time and get down to business. Our business." He smiles. "It was a good idea. Dad was right."  
  
Sam turns his face to the wind.  
  
Dean's fingers flex on the wheel. Sam knows this because he hears the faint grate of Dean's ring. He also hears a bottle roll beneath his seat as Dean downshifts, and he wonders when someone was drinking in the car; John usually forbids this, so it was probably John himself. Or maybe--  
  
Sam looks over at Dean, fast, then sticks his head back out the window. He shuts his eyes against the wind, against the cloud of gravel dust and bugs daring his eyes and well up and spill over.  
  
*****  
  
The unacknowledged family order--the party line--is that Sam is the spoiled brat, the rebel, while golden Dean can do no evil. It's almost true. Still...  
  
Sam remembers Dean's rebellious phase. It lasted seventy-two whole hours back in October of last year, the week they pulled out of Fairfax, Indiana. The storm started brewing the minute they crossed the town line, Dean registering emotional turmoil the way he always did: silently. He didn't speak a word as they rocketed south, refusing their dad's offers to let him spell John at the wheel, a chance Dean usually leapt at with glee.  
  
Sam was confused. Dean had seemed to relieved to get away from the school; it was Sam, as usual, who'd dragged his feet and sulked at the upheaval. But as the miles fell away between the Winchesters and Truman High, Sam had been surprised at the lightening sensation in his chest, as though he'd left a part of himself in Mr. Wyatt's classroom. A heavy, useless part that had slowed the machinery of his lungs and his nerves for so long that he'd been crippled without realizing it. Breathing freer, now, and given permission to dream and to feel in his fumbling, amateurish way, Sam had not expected to find Dean sagging under all the weight Sam had shed. What had happened to his brother back in Indiana?  
  
Dean stayed virtually mute all the way to Arkansas. He obeyed John in a curt, detached way which broadcast all-too-clearly that he was speaking and performing his battery of chores from reflex only. His heart was no longer in it. He ignored girls, even the pretty diner waitresses and convenience store clerks he usually claimed were the high points of his day. He stopped singing along to the car radio, stopped using product in his hair, stopped amusing himself by tormenting Sam with his bodily functions and crude practical jokes.  
  
In a restaurant on the outskirts of Fayetteville, Dean ordered a spinach salad. John froze with a dinner roll halfway to his mouth. Sam was too upset to finish his own meal.  
  
The exorcism was a fiasco. There was some lapse on Dean's part, a near-fatal moment of hesitation that nearly cost both John and Dean their lives. The two shuffled back into the hotel room hollow-eyed and flattened, John with a sprained wrist, Dean (this most disturbing of all) staring at Sam and their father as though he'd never seen them before. Or worse, as though some veil had been lifted and he was seeing them, all three, as they truly were: selfish and revenge-crazed, bleeding onto wrecked industrial carpet two hundred miles from god knew where. Sam didn't want to know what had put that look on his face.  
  
Dean had leapt up, torn out of the room without warning. He took the car and ignored John's calls for the next three hours. When he returned, it was with a blonde girl in a Hooters-style uniform of hot pants and spangled tank, who looked most nonplussed to find a middle-aged man and a high-school boy there in Dean's room.  
  
Dean was so drunk he could barely stand.  
  
But he wasn't too far gone to talk, and he introduced the girl to John and Sam, referring to her alternately as Cindy, Sally, and Susie. Slouched on a corner of the bed and rubbing at the small of the girl's back, he kept up a stream of bubbly, inane dinner-party banter, bullshit so out-of-character Sam was tempted to check Dean's fake i.d. or yell "Christo". _I'm hungry, is anyone else hungry? Why don't we all head out for dinner and drinks? I know I could use a nightcap. Dad, why don't you tell Sally here about the aluminum siding racket? Or Sammy, Sammy--tell her about getting elected student council secretary. Gosh, were were proud of old Sammy that day, I can tell you._  
  
It went on for nearly ten minutes before John rose, red-faced. There were rifles and knives in plain sight, strewn across surfaces throughout the room. Holy water, salt trails, xeroxed photos of grisly supernatural massacres--the whole godawful picnic basket of their lives overturned for this stranger to goggle at. The only mercy was that she herself was so drunk her eyes were crossed.  
  
John had cut Dean off mid-rant, announcing in a quiet, deadly voice that it was time to drive the young lady home. He plucked the keys from Dean's hand and helped the girl to her feet, whisking her out of the room so fast Sam's eyes could barely track the movement.  
  
As soon as the door snicked shut behind John, they listened together for the rumble of the Impala's engine. Dean's eyes closed and his idiotic smile curdled into an emotional murder scene, a grimace of pain so ugly Sam had to look away.  
  
Dean had said, _Am I supposed to be ashamed of you?_  
  
 _Come on_ , Sam had answered. _You need to be asleep when Dad comes back._  
  
He stayed quiet as Sam pushed him down, tugging at his boots and the sleeves of John's leather jacket. When he was down to his jeans and t-shirt (still bleeding lightly through the white cotton), Sam tucked him under the sheets and reached to snap off the lamp. Suddenly, Dean's hand grasped Sam's wrist.  
  
 _I swear to God Sammy, I know how fucked up we are and I'm sorry, I am so sorry it turned out this way--if I could take you away from this--if I could--_  
  
It was all Dean could manage before he passed out. Sam stood and watched him sleep, heart ratcheting. He was still standing there when John came in forty minutes later. Sam turned, unconsciously blocking Dean with his own body, but John only said: _Get to bed_.  
  
So Sam had crawled in at once next to Dean, forgetting to brush his teeth or even to pull his clothes off. He fell asleep with his fingers pressed to his wrist. It tingled where Dean had gripped him--where Dean had held him while he said, while he _admitted_ \--  
  
He woke up the next morning, registered his feelings, and tried to remember whether someone had been born or killed last night. Dean and John were gone. Sam shot out of the bed, stumbling around the dark room half-crazed for some sign of where they'd gone, what John had done with Dean--  
  
He wrenched the door open and there they were, fully-dressed and sitting at a picnic table on the motel's wide cement breezeway. Two cups of coffee sat steaming on the table. John was talking in a low voice; Dean's back was to Sam. When they heard the door open, both looked over at him where he stood shifting, dancing from foot to foot with anxiety and a sudden crushing need to pee.  
  
 _Hey_ , Dean said, rising. He glanced quickly at John, who nodded. Dean came over, knelt before Sam (there had been a bigger height difference back then) and said again, soft, _Hey, buddy. Come in here for a minute._  
  
His eyes looked bloodshot, red-rimmed like he'd been crying, but his smile was not the plastered-on horrorshow of the previous night. It looked natural. Luminous. Sam couldn't help following that smile back into the room. Dean closed the door behind them and sank into the single armchair, and Sam perched like a bird on the bed across from him, talking all in a rush, demanding to know what had happened, if Dad was mad, if he had--  
  
 _Whoa, Sammy._ Dean held up his hands. _Hold up. I'm fine, everything's cool._  
  
 _Cool?_ Sam had repeated. _After what happened last night?_  
  
Dean had the grace to look sheepish, at least. _Yeah, don't worry. Dad and I had breakfast and talked about some stuff. It's almost eleven, you know_. He flicked a finger at the digital clock on the nightstand. _You crashed pretty hard._  
  
 _Not as hard as you did!_ Sam's voice cracked and he swallowed. _You totally passed out after Dad left to drive that girl home. I had to tuck you in like a kid. You, uh. You said some stuff._  
  
 _I did?_  
  
 _Yeah_ , Sam said. Searching Dean's face for some hint. _Something about--about how fucked up our lives are, and how you wanted to get both us out of here. Do you remember--_  
  
 _Oh, Sammy. No. You've gotta listen to me, okay?_ He rubbed at his sore eyes. _I'm sure I said some pretty crazy shit last night. I've been messed up lately, you know that. Truth is, Amanda said...some things...before we left Fairfax. I guess my feelings were more hurt than I wanted to admit_. He held up his hands again, palms out. _Whatever. What I'm trying to tell you is, I didn't mean anything by any of what I said last night, okay? It was just...whiskey and a bad hunt and a really shitty week talking. That's all it was_.  
  
Sam froze. _That's all...?_  
  
 _Yes! God, Sam, please believe me._ Dean scooted forward, urgent. _This family is everything to me. Everything. You and Dad are all I care about and I would never split us up. Never in a million years._  
  
 _Oh_ , Sam said, a little whisper. _But--_  
  
Dean leaned over and pulled Sam in, gently, by the back of the neck. _We're all we've got, Sammy. Our schools and addresses might change, but that never will. And I'll find a way to keep the three of us together no matter what. Don't you worry about that. I promise._ Then he did something Sam would never forget: He touched his forehead to Sam's and said again, _I promise_.  
  
*****  
  
Later that day, when Dean was out interviewing the widower whose wife had been strangled with a garden hose by the poltergeist, John came in with a bag of Chinese take-out. Sam helped him unload the cartons and spoon out the noodles and rice onto paper plates.  
  
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Sam opened his mouth to ask John for a packet of hot mustard, but what came out was, _If I'd done any of this, you'd have given me a black eye_.  
  
It was the coldest, most deliberate thing he'd ever said that wasn't in Latin. John looked at him, swallowed a mouthful of lo mein, and said, _Your brother doesn't need anyone to punish him._  
  
 _Not like me_ , Sam said, _I guess._  
  
He'd thought John would snap then, but the man just smiled, a sad, fond little smile. _Sammy_ , he said, _I don't guess there's anyone quite like you._  
  
When John reached out to rumple Sam's hair, Sam let him. He picked up his chopsticks and finished his meal, eyes on his plate. He didn't say: _But there_ are _people like me. A whole schoolful. Maybe a worldful. Did you think I'd never figure that out, the two of you?_  
  
  
3.  
There's an honest-to-God Walgreen's in downtown Arden. Sam adores Walgreen's because they are uniformly clean and well-lit, no matter the city, with helpful staff, reasonable prices, and impressively-stocked medical and grocery sections. Some afflictions Walgreen's has saved the Winchester men from: Gangrene. Typhus. Scurvy. Influenza. Severe dehyrdration. Poison oak. Second-degree burns. Gingivitis. Gonorrhea (Dean). Seasonal allergies (Dean again). Head lice (Sam, traumatically). And a strain of supernatural rabies that has a 100% violent and disgusting fatality rate when left untreated, yet is easily cured with a simple course of magnesium supplements.  
  
Dean objects on principle to any franchise big enough to boast security cameras and anti-shoplifting devices. He does admit, though, that the candy aisle "is off the hook".  
  
This is how Sam ends up in the office supplies section of the Walgreen's in Arden, Oklahoma, two weeks before he will begin his Sophomore year of high school. Sam doesn't yet know that the school will be located in a suburb of Lincoln, Nebraska, and wouldn't care if someone had told him; what is happening right here, this morning, is so revolutionary that any school in the Winchesters' eternal parade of practically-identical learning institutions is bound to be an anticlimax.  
  
Because this is the morning that Sam declares himself. Never having considered his own preferences because he had never been allowed them, Sam must decide whether he prefers college-ruled notebook paper to wide-ruled, micro-tip pens to ones with a bolder line, translucent to transparent Scotch tape. Mechanical pencils, apparently, come in three different thicknesses of lead; and white-out is sold in every conceivable form from liquid to gaseous.  
  
Sam has never much cared what was in the single plastic bag that Dean has invariably dumped at the foot of his bed the night before Sam begins school for the past decade. Sam has made due with what he's handed. Even now he doesn't see how such things as line width and the number of binder rings could matter so much to people, but they do. Sam knows that, for ordinary consumers, these choices are infused with an almost talismanic power--that they become determinors of their identities at school among both teachers and friends, and that kids with better, more specially-suited tools and supplies are more likely to distinguish themselves as successes.  
  
Sam doesn't think this either fair or entirely rational, but at this point he doesn't give a damn. What matters is that he now has control over this tiny facet of his identity. He alone will dictate the quality of paper he'll use to take notes and hand in book reports. He gets to choose the black ink or the blue, ballpoint or rollerball, and for once he'll have the instruments he needs to work without borrowing or stealing another kid's.  
  
Thinking of Dean choosing a gun or a knife--his hands, his eyes so intent and knowledgeable as he tests their weights, measures the span of his fingers around their hilts and handles--Sam caresses the gleaming plastic packages containing his weapons of choice. He flips through notebooks, pausing every so often to sniff at their snowy-white pulp pages. And when he checks out thirty minutes later, toting not one stuffed cellophane bag but two, Sam is $34.72 closer to freedom.  
  
In the parking lot, Dean waggles his eyebrows as Sam slides into the passenger seat. "Gimme some sugar," he says, lewd. Sam reaches into one of the bags and tosses Dean a packet of peanut M &Ms.  
  
"Happy?" is Dean's only comment on the two overflowing bags at Sam's feet.  
  
Sam smiles a little, looking out the window. "Yeah. Thanks, Dean."  
  
"Whatever." He can hear Dean smiling around a mouthful of chocolate. "Hey, you wanna go swimming?"  
  
This startles Sam. "Don't we have to work today?"  
  
"We've got all evening to work. I stocked us up so we're in good shape. Summer's almost over, Sammy, come on."  
  
"Well--" Sam is grinning now. "Yeah, sure."  
  
Dean claps once, leans over and fishes a ball of fabric out of the backseat. In one smooth, continuous gesture, he flings what turn out to be Sam's swim trunks into the footwell, slides a pair of sunglasses on, turns the key in the ignition, and cranks the stereo volume.  
  
"Hang on to your Trapper Keeper, bitchface," he says as they peel out of the lot.  
  
  
4.  
They've never learned the name of this river. Dean found the spot two weeks ago, with his uncanny knack for ferreting out fun local attractions, no matter how mundane the area. There are enough tire tracks in the patchy grass along its banks that Sam suspects the place of being a teen make-out spot. This begs the question of how Dean ended up in the middle of some anonymous tract of land eight miles from their farmhouse, but Sam supposes there are some details he's better off not hearing.  
  
The riverbank here is almost totally ungraded, so that the water appears to cut in a ribbon across the surface of the prairie. A single willow grows on the bank upstream, providing the only apparent shade for miles.  
  
Today the place is deserted. Sam plunges in and out of the water, smacking the surface happy as a seal, while Dean toasts his freckes sprawled on the muddy green gingham blanket from their trunk.  
  
Eventually Sam flops down next to him, breathless. He's pleased to see that his own skin is deepening its smooth, uniform brown, whereas Dean's has maintained its paleness with a faint golden cast across the nose and shoulders. Sam hopes the tan makes his scarecrow limbs look less gangly.  
  
"You need a haircut," Dean mumbles, facedown and stupid from the sun. "Look like a wet labrador."  
  
Sam responds by shaking his head, dog-like, spraying Dean's back with cool river water. Dean jerks and let out a muffled yell, but Sam thinks it must feel good: Dean's back is starting to pink up under the glare. "Didn't you bring sunblock?"  
  
"Yeah." Dean reaches up and shoves him a foot to the right on the blanket, then collapses back into the shadow Sam casts. "Don't move."  
  
"Jerk." Sam laughs, exasperated. They lie there, listening to the river rush and the lonesome rustle of wind over the plain.  
  
Dean's head is turned so Sam is able to look at the expanse of his back, rolling like landscape with Dean's deep breaths. There's a light dusting of sand or dust at the small of his back. He hasn't bothered with swim trunks today, just stripped down to his white briefs. They're the same brand Sam wears. Sam eyes him, critical, trying to see why they look sexy on Dean rather than childish. Then he realizes that it's got nothing to do with the underpants and everything to do with being nineteen and built, and he looks away, embarrassed.  
  
"I might go out for basketball this year," he says, out of nowhere. He braces himself to be mocked, but Dean doesn't respond for a moment.  
  
When he does, he just turns his head on the blanket and says, "You'd be better at soccer."  
  
"Says who?"  
  
"Says me."  
  
Sam is about to ask how Dean knows this, then realizes he doesn't have to ask. He bites his lip, wondering if Dean felt this way when Sam corrected his posture so effortlessly this morning. Somewhere between transparent and reassured. It's a weird cocktail of emotions.  
  
"Thought you didn't have time for normal human crap like sports," Dean continues, and Sam is relieved by the rush of uncomplicated annoyance. But he can't explain why extracurriculars like sports teams suddenly seem important, any more than he can explain why he needed to equip himself with his own school supplies. So he just shrugs and bends to pick a scab at his knee.  
  
"Soccer, then. Yearbook." Some reckless impulse makes him add: "Maybe get laid."  
  
Dean props himself up on his elbows at that, with a look that's part amused and part impressed. "Well, smell you," he says, grinning.  
  
Sam ruins the effect by turning his face away and propping one burning cheek against his knee, but he isn't sorry. "Finished a good book," he says, to change the subject in a hurry.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Yeah. _The Outsiders_. I found my old copy from Mr. Wyatt's English class."  
  
"Wyatt. Was that the guy you were so in love with last fall?" Dean says. What Sam hears is, _That the guy Dad could take in a fight?_  
  
"He was a great teacher," is all Sam says.  
  
" _The Outsiders_ ," Dean murmurs. He eases down onto his back. "Good movie."  
  
"It's great," Sam agrees, "but the book is even better. There's more about their families. Some of it sort of...reminded me of us."  
  
Dean gives him a long look. "Those kids were orphans," he says, confused.  
  
"Yeah." Sam is careful to sound casual. "Some of them, but. Switchblades and chocolate cake for breakfast?" Sam laughs. "It kinda sounds like us."  
  
Dean laughs too, tickled. There's real humor in his laugh, unlike Sam's. "Okay, so who am I in this book?"  
  
Sam opens his mouth to say _Darry_ , the cocksure big brother. Suddenly he pictures Johnny Cade, huge-eyed and cringing, a fugitive clutching his knife in terror. Flashes on Dean's arm wrapped around his wrist like a talon, Dean's mask of agony. _I swear to God--If I could take you away from this--_ Beaten, bewildered Johnny, the martyr who still somehow finds it in himself to run into a burning church to rescue children.  
  
Sam sits up, clutching his stomach. He feels cold. A tremor seizes his arms and he curls them around himself, forces himself to take deep breaths.  
  
"You okay?" Dean asks.  
  
After a moment, Sam says, "I'm okay," because he is. He adds, "You're Darry. The big brother."  
  
"Darry." Dean stands, stretches, a lovely and uncorrupted line of muscle. "Isn't that Swayze?"  
  
Sam nods. Dean throws himself into the river with a whoop.  
  
Sam watches from the bank. The tremors have gone but the coldness remains. In this moment he looks at Dean with a stranger's eye, seeing him--seeing them all--clearly for the first time. He sees that Dean does not like himself, has never liked himself. Dean does not value his own life. The only lives Dean values are Sam's and their father's. _You're everything, you're all I care about_. Dean is going to die running into the church, not following John as he supposes, but rescuing him from the fire of their shared memory: Mary's fire. Dean is going to die and Sam can choose to follow him or not.  
  
He hears Dean telling him, _I am so sorry things turned out this way._  
  
Sam doesn't want to run into the burning church. The life Sam plans to save is Sam's.  
  
In the river, Dean has disappeared beneath the rippling surface. Sam recognizes this training exercise of their dad's--holding your breath for as long as you can while fighting the current. Sam reaches for his sneakers and pulls them on, looping the laces carefully, as Dean taught him to do years ago. His eyes are fixed on the water.  
  
A minute passes. The surface of the river stays perfect, unbroken by so much as a strong breeze. Sam turns and walks back to the car.

**Author's Note:**

> This one's a birthday present for my dear ordinarily, who wanted to see how the events of 4.13 (After School Special) changed the boys. It's going up rougher than anything I've ever posted. It was written, as always, in a state of intense love and wild distraction, so please excuse any sloppiness or innaccuracies.
> 
> I invented the town of Arden as a nod to Tulsa, Oklahoma, Hinton's unspoken setting for The Outsiders. I loved After School Special's thematic links to that novel and wanted to pick up those threads--the heartbreak of exclusion, contrasted with Pony Boy's freshness and acuity, which felt very Samlike to me--with Untitled. Untitled = a deliberate choice of title. I'm not the first writer to see a certain hopeful futurity in the word.
> 
> The soundtrack, if you want one, are CCR's "Green River" Neko Case's "Deep Red Bells", and Heart's "Dog and Butterfly".
> 
> Oh, and: When I read Teenchester fic, I always picture younger JP and JA, don't you...? ♥


End file.
